Question

Suppose that the natural rate of unemployment in a particular year is 4 percent and the actual rate of unemployment is 7 percent. instructions: enter your answers as whole numbers.

a. use okun's law to determine the size of the gdp gap in percentage-point terms.

b. if the potential gdp is $500 billion in that year, how much output is being forgone because of cyclical unemployment?

Answer 1

a. The GDP gap is: 6%

b. The forgone output is: $30 billion

Step-by-step explanation:

GDP (gross domestic product) is the output produced within a country in a given time period. Okun's law establishes an inverse empirical relationship between unemployment and losses in productivity of a country. In terms of output, Okun's law states that for every percentage increase in cyclical unemployment, a country's potential output is lowered by 2%. Cyclical unemployment is the difference between the natural unemployment rate and the actual unemployment rate.

In this scenario, the natural rate of unemployment is 4% and the actual rate is 7%. Therefore, unemployment due to business cycle fluctuations is: 3% . Since the output gap is double the percentage increase in unemployment, the output or GDP gap is 6%. The dollar amount of the GDP gap given the $500 billion potential GDP is (0.06 * 500) = $30 billion